BCH formally vacates Broadway campus

BOULDER — Almost a century after Boulder Community Hospital opened as a 45-bed facility on Broadway in north Boulder, Boulder Community Health has moved the last of its medical services to new locations, officially closing the Broadway campus.

The city of Boulder, which purchased the Broadway campus from BCH in December 2015 for $40 million, officially takes over the campus Wednesday.

BCH built Foothills Hospital at Arapahoe Avenue and Foothills Parkway in 2003, eventually moving most in-patient acute-care services to an expanded Foothills campus in late 2014. The last of the nonprofit health-care system’s operations moved from Broadway to various locations in early April.

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BCH on Friday conducted a ceremony for current and former staff, physicians and volunteers to commemorate the transition.

“As most of us here today, we had a period in our lives when Boulder Community Hospital was our home away from home,” BCH Board of Directors chairman Dee Perry told the crowd. “When you’re forced to leave a cherished place like this behind, it has a bittersweet feeling. This building had a soul that made my family, for multiple generations, feel safe, cared for and welcomed.”

The Broadway campus opened in 1926 as a 45-bed hospital, serving the Boulder community’s health needs for more than nine decades.

“Nine decades is a lot of babies born, a lot of lives saved, a lot of saying goodbye to loved ones passing away,” BCH president and CEO Robert Vissers told the crowd.

The ceremony closed with a short reading that concluded: “May all who walk here in days to come have a sense that the ground they tread is a special one indeed.”

The city’s acquisition of the Broadway campus included 8.8 acres of land and more than 355,000 square feet of existing building space. It includes the hospital and associated grounds at 1100 Balsam Ave.; the Medical Pavilion at 1155 Alpine St.; the parking garage at 2655 Broadway; the Brenton Building at 1136 Alpine St.; the parking lot at 1125 North St.; and the parking lot at 1135 North St.

City officials recently have balked at the estimated $85.2 million needed to renovate or remove existing buildings to prepare the site for redevelopment into offices for city employees and affordable housing.